Nature of creep deformation in nanocrystalline Tungsten

Because of Tungsten’s (W) use in high temperature and stress environments like next generation fusion reactors, exploring the creep deformation mechanism in this material is very essential. In this work, for the first time, nature of creep in nanocrystalline (nc) Tungsten and factors that govern the creep mechanism like grain size, temperature, and applied stress are studied through atomistic simulations. Applied stress is varied from 2.5 to 5.5 GPa on the metallic sample while the temperature is varied in the range of 1600–2200 K. Stress and temperature variance are repeated for average grain sizes of 2.38 nm, 2.86 nm, 3.57 nm, and 4.76 nm. From the simulations, it has been found that the creep mechanism in nanocrystalline Tungsten is contingent…